


Filing in The Gaps - While she was gone

by Thefishoutofwater



Series: Filling in the Gaps [6]
Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Angst, F/M, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 15:42:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13298028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thefishoutofwater/pseuds/Thefishoutofwater
Summary: A/N Consider this to be some missing or alternative scenes and thoughts to go with the She's Leaving Home episodes, Season 11, Episode 22 & carry my take of the story forward a little.





	Filing in The Gaps - While she was gone

The warm spring day complete with rare clear skies had passed Jo Wilson by. She was exhausted. Bone shudderingly tired and emotionally spent. A rotation on the plastics service had left her working in the burns unit and the pain and stoicism of her patients was starting to get to her.

The house was dark and quiet when she finally made it home. Whilst relieved that it wasn’t another night she had to deal with a sad and needy Maggie Pierce on the sofa it did feel unnaturally still.  She dragged herself up the stairs pulling slowly on the bannisters to climb to the first floor where she all but fell into the shower keen to wash away the sharp, sterile smell of the unit away.

Clean and a little refreshed she pulled on a t-shirt and headed to bed. Alex lay, covers partially thrown off in his sleep and his hand loosely reaching to his dresser and his phone. He stirred as she slid into the bed, careful to keep her cold feet away from his leg,

“Hey,” a sleepy half- smile and a soft kiss planted carefully on her forehead as he turned slightly pulling her closer, “Any word at the hospital tonight?”

She bit down on her frustration. Alex’s focus on finding his missing friend only seemed to grow as the days had gotten longer and the weeks turned into months.

“Nothing. No news. Go back to sleep.” She pressed a soft kiss to his chest and closed her eyes.

 

* * *

 

It was mid June and the rain was falling relentlessly as Jo ran through the front door, magazine over her head.

“I swear I need to get a new umbrella,” she announced as she shook her wet hair and stripped off the damp raincoat, “Alex are you here?”

She found him in the kitchen watching a pot of soup on the stove a phone in hand and a sheet of paper in front of him. Right hand continuing to scroll through his web pages he half turned to the fridge and pulled out a can of soda. She crossed over to him, took the can and pulled herself into his chest for a hug. He moved her closer with his left arm dropping a kiss in her hairline. She smiled and sank into the embrace. Even as she did so feeling the stress of the day start to fall away she was aware of him bringing the phone to his ear,

“Hi can you put me through to Dr Grey please? Surgical wing?” a pause whilst he waited and where Jo tried hard not to show her irritation, “ok thanks no. Not to worry. Bye.”

He extracted himself from the hug and put the phone down with a sigh. Picking up a pen he scrawled the name of the hospital he had just rung at the bottom of a longer list and drew an angry line through it. The pen was thrown back to the counter and he went again to pick up the phone. Jo gently reached over and placed her hand over his,

“No more Alex. Not tonight please.” And lifted the hand to her lips kissing it gently. Her heart breaking at how sad he looked.

 

* * *

 

Jo had been sequestered in the burns unit whilst the main Seattle firework display lit of the sky overhead. Any local or neighbourhood displays had been well finished by the time she pulled the car up in front of the dark house after another long day.

Deciding she would live without a shower she moved carefully around the darkened room until she was ready and climbed into bed next to a still Alex, the phone on top of the covers under his hand.  He made no move towards her and so she lay listening to his breathing trying to work out if he was asleep. Just as she decided he was and started to lengthen her own breathing he spoke suddenly, making her jump,

“Until Izzie I always did the leaving you know?” Jo paused, shocked. She could count on one hand the number of times he had ever proactively mentioned his ex-wife.

“I didn’t care about anyone when I went into the system. I left for school so fast my mom, brother and sister didn’t see me for dust, and I never really looked back.” he paused, apparently lost in thought whilst Jo scrabbled to keep up. She wasn’t sure she had realised he had siblings.

“I don’t keep in touch with anyone from pre-med. I don’t keep in touch with anyone from med school. I just packed a bag and kept moving.  I was all ready to walk away when Jimmy showed up. Just turned around and kept going.” The pause lengthened, and Jo hummed an incompressible but hopefully positive noise to encourage him to continue.

“When Izzie left I nearly walked but Mer talked me down. I mean not really because we don’t talk about real stuff but she knew. She knew I was restless and she talked me down. When the papers finally came, Mer was ready to go kick her ass!” He snorted gently lost in the past,

“Then after the boards, after the plane accident I was all ready to leave. You know that right when you first started? I was all ready to go start this great new career and then she called me out. Right there in the middle of the fricking airport. And like an idiot it got to me. So, I turned around and came straight back even when Yang had moved on. Oh, Yang  - she got to go to Minneapolis and I stayed. Then even when she came back she got leave again and yet here I am. Still staying.”

“I know.” Jo was quiet, afraid of disturbing his train of thought and almost hypnotised by his tense, sad voice. 

“There was a time when I thought she was off to Boston but she didn’t in the end. Then it was going to be Washington and a town house and a perfect family but she didn’t want it. But now after all that she’s gone, and I’m still here. I swear to God Jo I thought it all mattered. I thought after everything _we_ mattered but she’s gone and left. Like Izzie, like O’Malley, like Yang they’ve all up and left and I’m still here. When did I stop being the one who left and became the one who got left behind?”

His voice cracked and Jo stunned by the raw pain behind his words  and trying to not read into his parallels between his ex-wife and the still missing Meredith Grey pulled him to her chest, holding his head and rubbing his back tenderly,

“I know babe, I know. I’m here though Alex, and I’m not going anywhere.”

 

* * *

 

Jo couldn’t wait for the Christmas season to be over. With no childhood memories of how a family holiday should be she always felt a little like an uninvited guest or an actor who had not quite finished learning all the lines when it came to Christmas, Halloween or Thanksgiving.  

This year though it was feeling like an uphill climb even without her usual antipathy.

In the burns unit she found her eyes filling with tears as the still horribly scarred JJ tried to comfort Anne with out of tune carols. On the paediatric ward she found her bottom lip wobbling as the long term patients squealed with joy at a visit from Santa. Pulling a shift in the clinic the poor families had her remembering tings she’d prefer not to as she treated cold, hungry homeless kids.

Home offered little relief, Robbins had made matters worse by lugging a tree into the living room and then leaving it embarrassingly unadorned with only a half string of lights. The number of attendings passing through seemed to have increased and Jo could no longer persuade her own friends to stop by; ‘everyone is just so sad’ Stephanie had tried to explain when pushed.  Pierce seemed to have moved in and kept producing plates of cookies and never-ending bowls of strangely coloured alcoholic drinks that kept everyone not on call in a dull vaguely drunken morose state. Little Sofia had been to visit and placed, with great ceremony, a present under the tree for Zola much to the consternation of all the adults who had been there and those who had subsequently lingered and spotted the gift. It was not the only present for the missing little girl in the house. Jo has seen a bag of gifts stuffed haphazardly under an old coat in Alex’ closet.

Yes, thought Jo mockingly, even in a life of terrible Christmases this one had been particularly crappy.  

Still they’d made it to Christmas night and a rare evening where neither she nor Alex were on call. Robbins was at the hospital and Jo had no idea where Pierce was other than a blessed sense of relief that it was not in their house. They sat side by side, Jo lost in thought and Alex weird ice cream eggnog in one hand, ever present phone in the other. The pathetic tree lights and the glow of Alex’s phone as he scrolled over Meredith’s name were the only light, finger poised on the call button,

“Do you have a good Christmas memory?” his voice shocked her.

“Not really,” Jo wondered if she’d sounded too abrupt, “I mean I was in a group home one year where they had a Santa come visit; a boozed-up kind of stinky Santa but still. And there was this foster placement when I was about ten where they had their own kids and just me placed with them and they tried.”

He nodded thoughtfully,

“Sometime we had a tree and dinner and stuff. But it was never a Hallmark movie type of a thing. Dad drank and mom worried when she was on her meds and was oblivious when she was off them. Izzie loved Christmas; which was annoying.” He stopped his frown softening as he looked up at a slight mark  the ceiling,

“When I started working in pedes I saw how much it meant to the kids it started to make sense, in a way it never really did before. Meredith’s more like us than you think you know?”

Jo jumped slightly puzzled with his strange stream of consciousness. Alex noticed her confusion and clarified,

“She’s not really a Christmas kind of person either. She used to say she was dark and twisty,” the frown gave way to a slight smile, “now Shepherd he was all about that stuff. Big family, lots of celebratory stuff. Liked having people all around,”

“Was that because his girlfriend was basically running a hostel?” Jo couldn’t help herself interjecting. He tipped his head slightly with a half smirk, but then continued,

“Bailey’s old enough to be getting it now and Zola this should have been her year and I just can’t shake myself from this idea that they are eating pizza rather than running round on a cookie high playing with new toys. Mer’s a great mom but this Christmas those kids can’t have their dad and that sucks. They should at least be in a familiar place with familiar people. If she’d stayed Yang could have come home and we’d have done something for them.”

Jo frowned slightly wondering where she fitted in this vision of the Christmas that wasn’t. His tone changed,  

“One lousy twenty second phone call. ‘I’m fine, the kids are fine’. What does that even mean? I’m so damn angry Jo!”

He threw his head back on the sofa, eyes shut.

Jo did not know what to say although not for the first time she cursed Meredith Grey and the limbo she’d placed them in.

Next year, she thought, next year if there was no more news she’d look at getting them away somewhere. Maybe her final year in a new city, maybe a jaunt abroad or even the peace core. Somewhere away from Meredith Grey’s damn shadow.

 

 

 


End file.
